Australia and East Timor in oil and gas talks

CANBERRA - Australian and East Timorese officials will begin fresh discussions today on how to divide up oil and gas deposits underneath the Timor Sea.

After nearly a year of negotiations, both sides finally appear willing to broker a compromise on carving up the oil-rich Timor Sea energy reserves, worth an estimated US$41 billion ($57 billion).

East Timorese foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta is confident an agreement can be reached, possibly as early as the middle of the year.

Negotiations reached a stalemate at the end of last year, with East Timor accusing Australia of issuing ultimatums and adopting a "take it or leave it" attitude with its smaller neighbour.

This time round the discussions will focus on a compromise that would involve setting aside permanent maritime boundary talks for up to a century.

East Timor is also keen for negotiations to look at ways it could benefit from downstream processing projects, as well as the potential for jobs based in Darwin to go to East Timorese workers.

A group of Australians, from the Timor Sea Justice Campaign, will try to gatecrash the negotiations in Canberra in an attempt to put their views forward on how they believe negotiations should move forward.

Calling themselves a people's delegation, the group, including Australian Greens senator Bob Brown, claims negotiators are not accurately reflecting the Australian peoples' values of fairness and justice.

They want to present an open letter, signed by many prominent Australians, to the negotiators, urging the government to set the boundaries halfway between the coastlines of East Timor and Australia.

Brown said the government was thinking of delaying a decision on boundaries because it would work in its favour.

"By attempting to postpone an agreement on maritime boundaries, the Australian government is conveniently ignoring the fact that most, if not all, of these oil and gas fields would belong to East Timor if permanent maritime boundaries were drawn in accordance with current international law," he said.

- AAP